Fort Ord's East Garrison roaring back to life

Gesturing over the East Garrison landscape where hundreds of thousands of soldiers prepared for war, Jim Fletcher laid out the battle plan for developing the planned community like a practiced field commander.

Over there, near the main entrance, the Manzanita Place affordable rental apartments will be deployed as the beachhead for the entire 244-acre development. Here on a plateau overlooking the undulating grounds is where the first model homes will be built on ready-to-go pads, an advance force for hundreds homes to be built in the initial phase of construction. There's where the central community park and the town center will be marshaled, with retail shops to come in later stages. Those old barracks and other military buildings from a bygone era will be renovated or removed as part of an arts district, capping off the campaign to transform the former U.S. Army bivouac into a smart-growth community. And the chapel where thousands of soldiers prayed before heading off to battle and where East Garrison's transformation was planned is being considered for a historical designation that would mark it for preservation in perpetuity.

During a tour of the Fort Ord planned community on a bluff overlooking the Salinas Valley, the Union Community Partners vice-president offered an on-site preview of plans for the sprawling community and showed off the progress made over the past year since a new development agreement with the county was finalized last summer.

The master development group took over the 1,400-unit project from East Garrison Partners after it fell into foreclosure in 2009, paying about a third of the $70million in development loans.

Fletcher said UCP, a wholly owned subsidiary of PICO Holdings LLC, is committed to the full East Garrison mixed-use community development concept as proposed.

"We're delivering on the original vision," he said, noting that the massive project approved by county supervisors in 2005 was the result of years of public input. "We believe in the vision. We're feeling a respect for the site's history and it's potential for the future."

Fletcher pointed out that the East Garrison proposal is "pretty unique in a couple of ways; it's a fully entitled project with water in Monterey County, and unlike most projects approved before the economic meltdown, it is beginning construction with its original concept intact.

Since work began last fall, there are now hundreds of housing pads and residential streets nearing completion, utilities, sidewalks and street lights are in place, and the first "vertical construction" is now in sight.

In addition, Intergarrison Road running along the western edge of the development should be fully signalized and operational by July, Fletcher said, with the main entrance to the development at East Garrison Drive to follow.

On Thursday, UCP hosted a groundbreaking for Fort Ord's first affordable housing project — the $22.9million, 66-unit Manzanita Place low- and very-low income apartments — which is on an accelerated building timeline due to the use of $10million in federal stimulus funds, and should be finished by September 2013.

During Thursday's ceremony, UCP president Dustin Bogue noted that it represented the first day that UCP, Mid-Peninsula Housing and the county were "delivering on the original promise" of the development, and described the project as the "launching pad" for more than 1,400 homes.

Bogue said Fort Ord was known as the most "idyllic" military post, adding "as it once was, so it will be again."

The affordable apartments project, backed by Mid-Peninsula Housing, represents the required affordable housing component of the East Garrison development's first phase.

That initial wave of building includes 441 homes, neighborhood parks and open space, a community park and the beginnings of a town center, and perhaps even a renovated military barracks for use by the local ArtSpace community as a precursor to the arts district.

Fletcher said all infrastructure should be complete by the end of June, and UCP's home building subsidiary Benchmark Communities would start constructing the first model homes about four months later and begin offering them for sale by next spring.

While the original plan called for simply selling the home lots to other home-builders, Fletcher said UCP now believes the housing market is such that it makes sense to do a little building of its own.

In fact, he said, UCP could end up building hundreds of homes.

In the second and third phases of the development, a total of 959 more housing units are planned.

There are 490 in the second phase, including an affordable apartments project backed by Community Housing Improvement Systems and Planning Association on a tree-lined valley on the southern side of the site.

And, 469 more are part of the third phase, which includes the arts district, Arts Habitat affordable units for artists, and condominiums, located atop a plateau on the development's eastern side.

Housing lots range in size from the largest, 50-foot by 100-foot so-called "bluff" and "village" lots, to slightly smaller "courtyard," "bungalow," "garden," and "grove" lots, and to multi-family townhouse, condominium and apartment lots.

In addition, the development will include its own fire station and library, as well as its own resident-funded homeowner's association, and community services and community facilities districts to operate and maintain public services such as water, sewer and public areas and buildings.

An estimated $20million of improvements, including public infrastructure and facilities, will be paid for through tax increment funding as development proceeds.

Fletcher said the second phase of development could begin within 3-4 years.

While the retail component of the town center was originally supposed to occur earlier on, Fletcher said UCP decided it simply made sense to hold off on that until later, noting that it wouldn't help the burgeoning community to have empty shop fronts.

Because so much of the site was cleared of oak trees and other vegetation during prep work, Fletcher said UCP plans to move at least 100 oaks from the eastern side of the site to the cleared areas where the first and second phases of building will occur.

Fletcher said UCP is also suggesting the county try to preserve part of the mammoth Army theater building, particularly its wood floor, for use as a community amphitheater, while acknowledging the challenge of dealing with the dilapidated, lead and asbestos-laden structure. He said other buildings such as the so-called "battle simulation" building, where generals planned maneuvers from a catwalk above giant war theater maps, is probably slated for the pages of history.

He said UCP has also started considering ideas for how to honor the estimated 1million troops who trained at East Garrison, many of whom shipped out to war. East Garrison was first used in the Civil War era, housed Buffalo Soldiers as early as 1902, and hosted Gen. George S. Patton's famed Third Army.

Fletcher said there's no way to know for sure but indications are it will take 10-15 years for "build-out," or completion of all construction, to occur.

Under the development agreement, all market-rate lots are to be sold by March 2016, and all market-rate housing units are to be ready for occupancy by March 2021.